The Dairy Crisis

I'm still looking into the economics of this issue, but here are various related links I've looked at so far:


From the New York Times :

Of course, I should have known, government intervention in the financial markets via the federal reserve fixing interest rates led to malinvestment and a boom in the dairy industry. Because of fixed resources ( it takes years to develop the genetics necessary for an optimal operation) there continues to be a glut of production on the market. Culling poor performing cows isn't enough, and high end dairy genetics don't translate into high quality beef. It would be like trading in your i-phone for a telegraph.

From: The Food Renegade Blog

"MPCs are basically a cheaper, foreign alternative to non-fat dry milk (NFDM) usually coming from water buffalos or yaks in places like China, India, Poland, and Ukraine. MPCs are created when milk is ultra-filtered through a process which drains out the lactose and keeps the milk proteins and other large molecules intact. Unbelievably (or believably, depending on the level of your lack of trust in the FDA), MPCs are not in the FDA’s Generally Recognized As Safe category and are therefore not approved as a food ingredient in the US. (source) - and it's in everything"


"In one interesting turn of events after the National Family Farm Coalition’s press conference of March 4th, State Senator Darrel J. Aubertine of NY introduced legislation requiring a product to be made with milk — not MPCs — if it wants to be labled a “dairy product.”

I may be able to go along with that. I don't like too much government, and oppose mandatory labeling on fast food and GM foods, but I don't even like 2% milk. I want the real thing whole milk. If it's dairy it better be milk in my opinion- truth in labeling. Let consumer's choose at what level of purity they want to consume.

A final quote:

"Once again, our insistence on finding the absolutely cheapest way to manufacture “food,” coupled with a healthy dose of government interference in the market, is causing farmers everywhere to watch their already meager incomes fall a dramatic 50% in the last quarter alone!"

I'm all for cheap food, but again let's be honest about what we are marketing, and get the government out of the way from there.